I'll never forget the day we went to look at that house. It was a cold windy day. The turning leaves of early autum filled the air, and dusted the ground.It was grey, threatening rain. The white wood of the porch, and trim were faded,and peeling. The red tin roof rusting. There were deep woods across the gravel road, and the trees grew almost right up to the house on three sides in what passed for a yard. It was overgrown with weeds,and brush everywhere except for a small dirt area seperating the house from the gravel road.
There was a well for water in the front yard. And an outhouse in the back. The ground sloped steeply at the back of the house making the rickety back porch high off the ground. There was an overgrown path to the outhouse which was right up against the right of way for the Tennessee Central railroad.
The landlord said."I'll have to mow this back some tammara fore wunna you yunguns git snakebit." Then he led us into the house. There was a pot bellied stove in the living room. There was a big iron bed in the front bedroom my sister would have. The kitchen had a woodburing cookstove, and the little bedroom off of it that my brother ,and i would share had a four foot snake! It writhed across the floor& into a hole in the baseboard. "I'll have to board that up too."
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A history of the lizzy Ann Grant house would be better read with the lights on. Starting with the night in the 40s when three women in the house one nite suddenly heard church bells. Yet when they rushed outside heard nothing. The house was less than a quarter mile from the church. Nobody else in the little comunity around the church heard anything that night,and no one was at the church. Then there is the fact that of the three people that died in the house, two died of brain anurisms. The one that didn't sucumb immediatly would go mad,have fits, and attack,and beat her daughter. The wallpapper still bore the marks where she would claw the walls from her bed when we lived there.
There were four corpses that lay in state in the house over the years. that used to be commen in the days before everybody used funeral homes. We didn't know this at the time. We had relaxed after the snake hole was patched, and the brush cut back some. Fall had turned to winter. A snow covered everything. We had a little cedar Christmas tree several huge care packages from Wisconsin full of presents and treats. We were happy. We didn't know we were poor. The only contact with the outside world was a white plastic radio usually tuned to WLS in Chicago. Our happiness in our perpetually cold little house came to an end shortly after Christmas....
We awoke one night to my mother screaming! She told us she saw a casket with a man in it, surrounded by flowers. When she related what she saw to my aunt Golda the next day, she said she had described to a T the last funeral that had taken place in the house. We slept with the lights on a lot after that. Winter melted into a lush green spring. The brush creeped back toward the house. One stormy night we returned home from Aunt Golda's. The wind was moaning in the trees. WE had all gathered in my sisters room for some reason, when we heard the noise of someone in the kitchen! We all followed mom into the room...The back door was wide open. There were wet footprints from the ladder leading to the attic to the back door. Rain penatrated the screendoor in gusts, the wind roared outside in the trees....
That was pretty much the last straw. for my mom. We moved into the Monterey housing project soon after that.
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There is a locally famous ghost story about "The ghost of overhead bridge" Legend has it when you cross the old wooden bridge over the narrow railroad cut at night that your headlight s fail. Or that if you turn off your engine parked on the bridge it won't restart. It's said that on foggy cold nights his red lantern can be seen waving down in the cut. It was my grandfather jerry holloway that found the body.
Just below the cut through mountain there was a switch. This switch had to be thrown twice daily to route trains to their rightfull destinations. A train hitting a closed switch from the other track would derail. Two men were sent down the cut one in the daytime, one at night. My grandad had the midnight shift. He would take his kerosene lantern, and walk the track five miles to the cut,and through it to the little shack by the switch where his friend waited with coffee on the small woodstove. But not on this night.
Grandad was just past the bridge a little over halfway through the cut when saw something gleaming on the track in the glow of his lantern. It was his friends pocket watch. He stooped and retrieved it thinking to return it to him. He walked a bit farther,and the horror began. He found a hand. He began to run...calling his friend's name...a foot&leg....and then the gory mess....
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My mom was big on dreams.She used to buy these dream books that would help you interpet them. They all meant something to mom. Usually something bad. I never really knew why until she told me this story,about this dream........
She was standing on the front . porch of the family farmhouse.The house just up the road from the Woodcliff Babist Church where my Aunt Golda still lives to this day. A grey hearse pulls up in front of the house, and her brother Tom gets out wearing a blue suit. Her other brother bill follows wearing a brown suit. They walk up to the house.
The next day she is standing on the front porch, and just like in the dream, a grey hearse pulled in front of the house. My uncle Tom gets out wearing a blue suit,and behind him my uncle Bill wearing a brown suit. they walk up to the house. There had been an accident at the sawmill, The huge saw had hit a knot, and pulled grandad holloway into the blade , cutting him in the chest. He died in my mother's arms.
Joe said all that.
